Said to be one of the oldest photographs taken in Barbados of a Bajan, this image captures Nancy Daniels. The picture is believed to have been taken in the 1850s, either at a studio in Bridgetown by the photographer Campion or at the house where she worked as a domestic servant.
Nancy was born either in 1751 or 1755 in West Africa, believed to be modern day Nigeria as it was thought she was of Igbo ethnicity. Her real name is unknown and it is believed she came to Barbados in her teens or as a young woman. Even though Nancy would have grown up in West Africa, survived the Middle Passage and being sold into slavery, the devastating Bridgetown Fire of 1766, the destructive hurricane of 1780, the Bussa revolt of 1816 as well as Emancipation and Apprenticeship, little is known of her life.
She is known to have lived in Bridgetown at Synagogue Lane and worked for the Daniels family as a domestic servant, for whom she worked for many years, first as an enslaved women and later as a domestic servant after Emancipation. At her death her age is officially recorded as 116 years, dying and buried on September 24th, 1871, but oral sources from the family put her age at 120 years old. She is one of the oldest people to have lived in Barbados, achieving super centenarian status.
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